“I’m not supposed to be out. I’ll just sneak back in.”
“How about this,” Matt suggested. “We’ll walk you back to where we can see you get inside your house.”
Joey shrugged. “Sure. It’s a lot of walking, though.”
“That’s okay. We need the exercise.” Meg flashed him a glance like nothing he’d seen from her yet. It was appreciation. She might actually like him a little bit for this. Or, at least, not dislike him quite so much.
They walked back up the hill with Joey. Killer trotted beside the child, happy to be in his company.
They passed a house with a plaque announcing that it had been Stonewall Jackson’s headquarters when he was in Harpers Ferry. A block later, Joey paused and knelt down to stroke Killer.
“We’ll watch from here,” Meg said. “And thanks so much, Joey. I guess no one else knew she was here because she just went to the church and then the cemetery—and left.”
Joey nodded.
Meg asked, “She was okay, though, right?”
“She seemed really...thoughtful, I don’t know, like my mom sometimes gets.”
“Hurry into your house. We’ll watch until you go inside,” Matt said.
Joey gave Meg an impulsive hug and Matt a wave, then ran toward his house. They waited until he’d slipped through a side door.
“Which one does your family own?” Matt asked.
“Opposite side.” Meg pointed out a house just behind Joey’s, built in the colonial style.
“Nice place.”
“My folks will never let it go. But they’re both retired. My mom worked for the park service and my dad was a teacher.”
“No siblings?”
“No. That’s why Lara was like a sister. She was an only child, too, and had lost her parents, as you know. My parents adored her and her aunt, Nancy, and so did my grandfather. We all spent lots of time together.” She turned and looked at Matt. “Let’s get to the cemetery.”
“Thank God for moonlight,” Matt said. “You have a flashlight?”
She reached into her pocket. “Of course. Do you have yours?”
“Of course,” he said, mimicking her. “I’ve been out in the field a long time. And I’ve been through another academy besides the FBI.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Life,” he told her.
*
Slash had left his car in a parking lot in Bolivar—abutting Harpers Ferry—and rented a flashy little sports car, easier to maneuver on mountains and hilly roads, instead. But Harpers Ferry was such a small, tight-knit town, plus the main drive down the hill was a tourist mecca, so he’d parked it, too. Why attract unnecessary attention?
For the past hour, he’d been walking. Uphill, downhill, following these wretched people.
Now they were going downhill again.
He had to make sure he couldn’t be seen. There was no explanation for him to be in Harpers Ferry, other than that he was hoping to find Lara, too, and then he’d be on their radar, a definite suspect.
They should have been huffing and puffing. Slash had to admit that fitness training at the academy had to be good. The two ahead of him didn’t even seem winded.
He stayed some distance back. As he waited, he saw the kid go through the side door. Curious, he made his way over to the house.
He could move well. He didn’t seem to have the wind or the ease of the agents, but he had learned to move like a spirit in the night. It was too bright out for him—the damned moon just had to be full—but what was he going to do?
Be careful. Be very careful.
He got closer to the house. He hadn’t been able to hear what the kid had told the agents.
At the house, he slunk against the wall and peered through the window. There was no sign of the kid. A pretty woman—a blonde—was at the kitchen window washing dishes. A man came in and slid his arms around her waist.
He listened the best he could to their conversation, watching their lips move. He’d gotten pretty good at lip-reading through the years. The conversation was boring.
The husband said he’d had a long day at work. She’d been busy with the PTA.
She was very pretty.
Long, wavy blonde hair. About five-six. He studied her and smiled.
Maybe...
But for now, the agents were getting a little too far ahead of him.
And he had to find out what the hell they were doing here.
What they knew. And what they might discover.
*
The cemetery sat at the top of the hill. When Robert Harper died, there’d only been three houses in the area, but Harper had set the four acres aside for a cemetery.
In the moonlight, the gravestones were beautifully, hauntingly opaque. The night’s fog was swirling around the graves.
Killer was oddly calm and quiet, staying close to Meg’s feet. It was almost as if the dog sensed that they were in a sacred place, that they walked among the dead.